


Acceptance

by Blackbird Song (Blackbird_Song)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-12
Updated: 2009-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-04 09:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackbird_Song/pseuds/Blackbird%20Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, it's best to accept that here, in this moment, one does the best that one can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acceptance

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the episode "Something Borrowed". Ianto's POV. My first Torchwood fic, posted in my LiveJournal on March 7th, 2008.

It's all right. I know you'll miss her. Not so much the fact of her, though you'll be clingy and distant and rude and demanding whilst she's gone, but the possibility that's been closed against you. I know that I can't be that to you. I haven't her vibrancy and light. I cling to Torchwood and pterodactyls, not to normality. Perhaps I can't give you meaning, or bring you back to yourself, as she seems to have done. I don't always know why you're with me, but I do know that you are, even when one of us seems to doubt it.

It is my duty, as team member and friend, to cut in. You are getting lost in each other. I try not to let it hurt too much when neither of you hears me, at first. The boundary between loyalty and jealousy can be fragile, like the rift.

She gives me the proper smile as she offers herself to me for a dance, but I choose you. She is surprised, at first, but then she goes to Rhys. I don't need to turn to see her kiss him. I don't need to see the happiness on his face.

You take the lead, which is a good thing when it comes to dance. You draw me far closer than I'd hoped, and press my hand to your chest. The analytical chip in my brain notes that this dancing as the follower thing isn't so difficult, after all. I switch it off.

I hold you close to me and feel you try to settle against me.

You don't succeed, at first.

I hold myself steady.

You cover a sigh with a breath and press your cheek to mine.

I cover a sigh with a breath and melt ever so slightly against you.

I cannot be everything to you. I have accepted this, and feel the exquisite freedom of it—with all the perfect chiaroscuro of that adjective. I cannot be everything to you, but I do know you deep down to the depths of the universe, and I can be here for you, with you, holding you steady even as you want to break apart. Even though you don't always know that I can, that I want to, that I should.

And even as that thought slips through my censors, you turn us and shift, and we are closer. I breathe a little easier. I can't turn my face to yours and kiss you just now, can't murmur reassurances in your ear, can't glance to the side to see the pain in your eyes that goes so much deeper and farther back than anything to do with Gwen's marriage.

I love you, even though I can't say it. I smile, just a little, when nobody's looking, as I realise that you have come far closer to saying that to me than I have ever come to saying it to you. Was there some sort of shift in the fabric of space-time that we failed to notice that made that happen? Did the laws of quantum physics decide suddenly to take a journey through a tunnel of their own making and end up changing your DNA in yet another impossible way?

I notice that I am holding you closer than I had, and I pull myself back to this moment. We both know the song is coming to an end. We'll have to clean everything up after the party, and that'll take all night. The window will be interesting; I must be sure to remember the stables….

I cannot be everything to you, and you will need to be alone tonight with your thoughts and your memories. It will hurt, a bit, as it always does, but love isn't perfect, and pretty houses often hold nasty ghosts or aliens—or memories. Our hub is beautiful. It holds the best and most horrific of all of those. It smells of time and weevils and death and you. You have never lied to me. I wish so much that I could say the same to you. You trusted me, even when you shouldn't have. And then you trusted me again after that. You've given me confidence, meaning, light. You're sad tonight, and you can't let me help you. Perhaps that will change, one day. I cannot be everything to you, but I am what I can be, and for now, that's all right.


End file.
